Niccolò Paganini

Niccolò (or Nicolò) Paganini (27 October 1782–27 May 1840) was an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was the most celebrated violin virtuoso of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique. His 24 Caprices for Solo Violin Op.1 are among the best known of his compositions, and have served as an inspiration for many prominent composers.

Biography

Childhood

Niccolò Paganini was born in Genoa, then capital of the Republic of Genoa, the third of the six children of Antonio and Teresa (née Bocciardo) Paganini. Paganini's father was an unsuccessful trader, but he managed to supplement his income through playing music on the mandolin. At the age of five, Paganini started learning the mandolin from his father, and moved to the violin by the age of seven. His musical talents were quickly recognized, earning him numerous scholarships for violin lessons. The young Paganini studied under various local violinists, including Giovanni Servetto and Giacomo Costa, but his progress quickly outpaced their abilities. Paganini and his father then traveled to Parma to seek further guidance from Alessandro Rolla. But upon listening to Paganini's playing, Rolla immediately referred him to his own teacher, Ferdinando Paer and, later, Paer's own teacher, Gasparo Ghiretti. Though Paganini did not stay long with Paer or Ghiretti, the two had considerable influence on his composition style.

24 Caprices for Solo Violin (Paganini)

The 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, were written in groups (six+six+twelve) by Niccolò Paganini between 1802 and 1817. They are also designated as M.S.25 in Maria Rosa Moretti and Anna Sorrento's «Catalogo tematico delle musiche di Niccolò Paganini», which was published in 1982. The Caprices are in the form of études, with each number exploring different skills (double stopped trills, extremely fast switching of positions and strings, etc.)

Intermezzo

In music, an intermezzo (Italian pronunciation:[ˌinterˈmɛddzo]), in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work. In music history, the term has had several different usages, which fit into two general categories: the opera intermezzo and the instrumental intermezzo.

Renaissance intermezzo

The Renaissance intermezzo was also called the intermedio. It was a masque-like dramatic piece with music, which was performed between the acts of a play at Italian court festivities on special occasions, especially weddings. By the late 16th century, the intermezzo had become the most spectacular form of dramatic performance, and an important precursor to opera. The most famous examples were created for Medici weddings in 1539, 1565, and 1589.

Opera intermezzo

The intermezzo, in the 18th century, was a comic operatic interlude inserted between acts or scenes of an opera seria. These intermezzi could be substantial and complete works themselves, though they were shorter than the opera seria which enclosed them; typically they provided comic relief and dramatic contrast to the tone of the bigger opera around them, and often they used one or more of the stock characters from the opera or from the commedia dell'arte. In this they were the reverse of the Renaissance intermezzo, which usually had a mythological or pastoral subject as a contrast to a main comic play. Often they were of a burlesque nature, and characterized by slapstick comedy, disguises, dialect, and ribaldry. The most famous of all intermezzi from the period is Pergolesi's La serva padrona, which was an opera buffa that after the death of Pergolesi kicked off the Querelle des Bouffons.

Plot

Intermezzo (horse)

Intermezzo (1966 – after 2 February 1995), was a British Thoroughbred racehorse and sire. He won two of his three races as a two-year-old in 1968 and went on to record his most important win in the ClassicSt. Leger Stakes at Doncaster in September 1969. He raced without winning in 1970 and was exported to stand as stallion in Japan, where he had some success as a sire of winners.

Background

Intermezzo was a bay horse bred in by his owner Gerald Oldham. He was sired by Hornbeam, a successful racehorse over extended distance who became the damsire of three Derby winners: Blakeney, Morston and Troy. His dam, Plaza, won several rces for Oldham, who had bought her for 2,400 guineas. As a descendant of the broodmare Rattlewings, Intermezzo was a member of the Thoroughbred Family 13-e, which has produced several important winners including Kayf Tara, Opera House and Hever Golf Rose. Oldham sent the colt to be trained in Newmarket by Harry Wragg at his Abington Place stable.

Racing career

Carnaval (Schumann)

Carnaval, Op. 9, is a work by Robert Schumann for piano solo, written in 1834–1835, and subtitled Scènes mignonnes sur quatre notes (Little Scenes on Four Notes). It consists of 21 short pieces representing masked revelers at Carnival, a festival before Lent. Schumann gives musical expression to himself, his friends and colleagues, and characters from improvised Italian comedy (commedia dell'arte).

The four notes are encoded puzzles, and Schumann predicted that "deciphering my masked ball will be a real game for you." The 21 pieces are connected by a recurring motif. In each section of Carnaval there appears one or both of two series of musical notes. These are musical cryptograms, as follows:

A, E-flat, C, B – signified in German as A-S-C-H

A-flat, C, B – signified in German as As-C-H

E-flat, C, B, A – signified in German as S-C-H-A.

The first two spell the German name for the town of Asch (now Aš in the Czech Republic), in which Schumann's then fiancée, Ernestine von Fricken, was born. The sequence of letters also appears in the German word Fasching, meaning carnival. In addition, Asch is German for "Ash," as in Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Lastly, it encodes a version of the composer's name, Robert Alexander Schumann. The third series, S-C-H-A, encodes the composer's name again with the musical letters appearing in Schumann, in their correct order.